Affluence boosted intelligence? How the interaction between cognition and environment may have produced an eighteenth-century Flynn effect during the Industrial Revolution

Authors
Publication date 20-11-2019
Journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Article number E211
Volume | Issue number 42
Number of pages 2
Organisations
  • Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FMG) - Psychology Research Institute (PsyRes)
Abstract Cognition played a pivotal role in the acceleration of technological innovation during the Industrial Revolution. Growing affluence may have provided favourable environmental conditions for a boost in cognition, enabling individuals to tackle more complex (industrial) problems. Dynamical systems thinking may provide useful tools to describe sudden transitions like the Industrial Revolution, by modelling the recursive feedback between psychology and environment.
Document type Comment/Letter to the editor
Note In response to: N. Baumard (2019) Psychological origins of the Industrial Revolution. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 42, e189.
Language English
Published at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X19000190
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